Psi looks badly broken

[ljsteele]

If you nix the sub-feats within spheres, but keep the required skill ranks, you keep low-level characters from being able to do big stuff -- like Assault or Regeneration. This makes sense given CT's psi rules.

You still need to learn a fair amount of skill to be able to even try it, and the character's maximum skill is limited by level. Without a psi class, the numbers track pretty well. One gets the cool stuff at roughly equivalent levels within a sphere and needs to be pretty high level to pull off the really cool stuff. If you learn about your psi power at a moderate character level, you can quickly pick up enough skill, but only if that's all you do with your skill points.

I think the rank prereqs are a bit blunt as a control, but livable.

DCs are a separate, but related problem. There should be some. I've been pondering the problem for things like TK -- modifiers for being able to see the object, being able to select one object from many, being able to manipulate only part of an object, manipulating it in a complex manner (solving a Rubix cube, FREX).

I'm not convinced on the Vessel Feat comparison. If I want to be a hot-shot driver or pilot, I can do it by just taking one or two Vessel feat(s) and lots of skill. A -4 is significant, but with a decent DEX bonus it isn't major.

For classes that get lots of skill points, or high INT characters, it may be more cost-effective to buy just lots of skill rather than multiple Vessel feats.

As currently written, if I want to be a hot-shot psi, I have to use lots of skill points _and_ lots of feats to do it. I can't just have one feat and do the rest at penalties.

Maybe I'm just confused by what you are trying to do. Can you put up an example of a character in your proposed class? Let's say at least two Affinities, moderate abilities with each.

On this topic, what do folks think of the PSI Training Feat (T20:108). This one bugs me too. Let's take Jim the Marine. Musters out a lvl 3 (already spent that 3rd level feat). Walks straight into the local psi institute. He doesn't get a feat until 6th level? What happens if he doesn't buy this feat?

I think if he buys the feat, he's guarranteed to get the fee waived, even if he's rich. If he's indigent and has a decent charisma, he can try for a fee waiver anyway. (Charisma? Vs. telepaths?) If he doesn't get the charity, he's out Cr 5000. Not a great deal of money for a feat slot, particularly if you don't know if you'll get enough skill to make waiving the training worth it.

Perhaps not the best mechanic.

 

[ljsteele]

Let's give this psionics thing some thought....

We've got to deal with some legacy issue from CT. One of those was that, except for Zhodani, nobody got any psi stuff during background. If a character wanted a chance of being a strong psi, they had to muster out early, so the character did not loose too much potential to aging. This gave the character will relatively few terms a potential balance to the retired rear-admirals with (comparatively) lots of skills.

The next legacy issue is that PSI is chancy. For D3e, you know what you're getting when you create a psionicist or a sorcerer, or a mage. There's no chance you'll invest a feat (natural psi, or psi training) and get nothing for it. I think that's a problem for T20.

The training issue is weird. Natural Talent and Psi Training seem ill-thought out (see my earlier post). I'd suggest a radical change to these feats to make them a bit more useful.

Another legacy issue is the randomness of spheres and the imbalance between spheres that cost lost of feats (telepathy) some feats (clairvoyance/awareness) and only one feat (TK and Tport). The player doesn't have any real control or influence over what spheres the character can learn. Again, poses problems for folks investing in feats without knowing if there'll be any payoff.

Now we come to the play balance issues. In CT, all it took to gain skills was time and decent dice luck. It seems to me that one is not expected to gain T20 levels very quickly. A player's going to be impatient if they get a decent power roll, then have to wait 2-3 levels to do anything with it because of the feat structure, especially if the character doesn't get to start investing in psi stuff until they muster out at, say 5-8th level.

We've got some rough tools to work with here -- feats, rank requirements, and DCs. If I had a better idea of the designer's goals, we might be able to make it work a bit more smoothly.

 

[Ran Malia]

I don’t think that it so confusing, but it may be the result of my pondering over it the last few days. Here are a couple of examples, which I hope explains what I am trying to say. Also not I was presenting two systems, one using the rules as they are and two, the latter, as a general rules modification.

Example 1: Pat Natural, alwasy thought that he was kind of special and he was, but he was afraid of what would happen if people found out he was a psi. So he does’t train in psi and in the hopes of suppressing his psi abilities he joins the Imperial Marines.

At first level Pat’s feats are Natural Talent in which he rolls Telepathy, an Open Slot, and a bonus Marine Feat. Natural Talent allows Pat to roll for Psi Strength and spend skill points as a cross class to his level limit, but it doesn’t allow him to choose discipline, hence every use of Telepathy will have the lack of discipline penalty of –10 (debatable and twice the psi strength cost). He also rolls for his psi strengh which is 12.

As a fifth Marine Pat’s feats are Natural Talent, two open slots, and three bonus Marine feats. His max cross-class skill is 4 ranks, which Pat has paid for with 8 skill points over the last 4 levels. At this point Pat has a Telepathy Skill Level of 5 (4 ranks + 1 Psi mod). How would this work:

Pat is going through a building on the frontier with his marine unit. He knows this is the perfect place for an ambush, but he doesn’t see any indication of an ambush. So he decides to see if his psi abilities can give him an edge. He decides that he is going to scan the room ahead for sentient minds (under the current system life dectection). Pat has a DC 10 to detect unshielded minds, however since he doesn’t have the Telepathy discpline he add +10, + 4 for medium rnage for a total DC of 24, meaning he needs to roll a 15 or higher. Moreover since they are at medium range it is going to cost him 10 psi strength points (+2 Life detection+3 medium range) X 2 non-discipline.

Later that week, Pat’s unit is ambushed and all his buddies are killed and Pat is out of ammunitions, but there is one guy left so Pat goes for an empathic attack of creating fear. Since Pat is natural talent sphere is Telepathy he can attempt any of the Telepathy disciplines. Pat would have a DC of 39 (25 change emotion + 4 for medium range, +10 non-discipline) and would have to spend 16 psi points (5 change emotion, +3 range) X 2. Pat has a very small chance of succeeding he would have to roll a natural 20 and he would have to spend some life blood for the 4 psi points he doesn’t have (this is a rule under consideration, but should not undermine what I am trying to explain) As Pat enemy soldier prepares to shoot Pat in the head he wonder what his life would be like if he had been psionically trained.

Example 2: Pat has some real choices now thinking about this alternative life with several options.

Options 1: Pat initial feats are Psi Training, Natural Talent, and bonus Marine Talent. In this situation Pat would roll for what Sphere he would have access to and the results are Telekensis and Awareness, he also gets to choose one of his affinity spheres as his prime sphere making it in class. Pat is a little upset about only gaining two affinities, however, all is not lost. If his Natural talent roll is one of his existing affinities then that affinity would get a +2, If it is not, he gets a third affinity with a +2 bonus. Now for our example let say that he get Telepathy Pat would now have Telekensis, Telepathy at +2, and Awareness. Pat chooses Telepathy as his primary sphere so Telepathy skill ranks are in class, and the other two are cross class. Which means at first level he can have Skill rank 4 in Telepathy and 2 in the others. At first level Pat still doesn’t have any discipline so he will have to pay the DC and cost penalties, but his skill rank in Telepathy is already higher, then it was at 5th level. By the time Pat is 5th level he could have a Telepathy rank of 8 and one discipline.

Option 2: Pat decides not to go down the natural talent path so takes Psi Training and rolls Telepathy, Telekensis and Awareness. He chooses Telepathy has his primary sphere so it is in-class. He also chooses the Telepathy sub discipline so at first level his Feats are Psi Training, Telepathy Discipline, and Marine Bonus Feat. Telepathy could be skill rank 4 and others could be skill rank 2. He also doesn’t recieve the non-discipline penatly for Telepathy. By the time he is fifth level he could have Telepathy rank 8 and two disciplines.

Pat thinks that he may have had a chance if he had chosen those options.

Example 3: I am running out of time so I will be quick as a first level Psionicist Pat could have his first three Feats Psionic Feats. So he would have Psi Training (required), Natural Talent or Discpline, plus a bonus Psionicist Feat, which would be comprised of Psionic Disciplines and Enhancements. As a psionicist he would have access to Advance Psi Training which allows him to make another sphere which he has an affinity with as an class skill and enhancements which modifiy psi abilities. As A fifth level Psionicist Pat would have 6 feats that he could spend on Psionic discplines and enhancements. For example Psi Training (Spheres recieved Telepathy, Telekinesis, and Awareness, chooses Telepathy sphere as class skill), Natural Talent (chooses Telepathy again), Telepathy Discipline, at first level, at second level he adds the Empathy Discipline, At 3rd level he adds Advanced Training and makes Telekensis in class. At 5th level he adds the Telekensis discipline. The result is at 5th level Pat has a potential Telepathy skill of 11 (8 ranks, +1 Psi mod, +2 Natural Talent) and the same in 9 in Telekensis, while he could only have a 5 in Awareness. The cost for Telepathy-Telepathy and Empathy would be normal with no DC penalty, the same would apply to Tk-Tk.

So that how the system would work

 

[CarlP]

I've been thinking about the psi skills lately, and Lisa's recent posting has touched on a few of the issues I've been wondering about, too. So I thought I'd air them.

There is the random nature of the psi. You have to roll for the strength of your psi, and you have to roll to see which spheres you have. As Lisa mentioned, that can lead to an awfully big investment in something that won't pan out.

Second, there is making psi work with the skills and feats. If we are going to keep both of them, we need to balance these out. Personally, I'm inclined to keep psi random, and low powered. But that's just the nature of MTU.

For the initial psi score, I don't see most people even making the roll. Unless you're going to try for psi ability, there's no point. That was the way it was in the old days. Ah, but there is the feat you can select when starting out, which changes things. So, do you roll before you select the feat, or do you select the feat and then roll for strength? Does it matter? From the player's point of view, the obvious thing would be to roll the dice first, then decide if the Psionics feat would be worthwhile.

I haven't crunched any numbers on this, yet, so I don't know if things will come out balanced or not. But I've come up with a few ideas.

First, I like the idea of reducing the number of feats required, and making them equal for all of the spheres.

Second, I like the idea of making the specific abilities skills. Again, I haven't crunched these numbers, but I was wondering:

For untrained psis, these skills count as cross-class skills, 2 points/rank.

For trained psis, these skills count as class skills, 1 point/rank.

This gives psi training a lot of benefit, but maybe doesn't make it mandatory.

As for the feats, except for a feat to "activate" a sphere, and maybe the feat to initially grant the psi powers, I don't want them to be required. On the other hand, I really like the idea of feats that can be taken optionally, to give the character a bonus. Something like "Telekinetic Hand: +4 on skill rolls when attempting to manipulate objects up to 5kg in weight." That sort of thing.

Also, how about feats for non-psis? All telepaths automaticallly get Mindshield. But in a universe where psionics are known of, I can certainly imagine people developing some sort of mental discipline against them. Certainly, burning a feat to acquire this would be worthwhile. (Ancient Buddhist Mind Control Trick: Iron Discipline!)

I apologize if this post isn't very coherent. I'm trying to write it amidst lots of distractions. I hope to sit down some time this weekend and actually do some number crunching on psis.

I think that the debate we've got going on here, though, certainly has the potential to come up with a workable, non-cumbersome system.

 

[ljsteele]

I've been doing some light pondering myself.

If we had some DCs for Telepathy in particular, we could have some resistance rolls or opposed checks. (Telepathy v. Will or a Will Save vs DC of psi's telepathy) That would allow things like Iron Will (T20:105-06) to be more useful. As it is currently written, if you have Read Surface Thoughts or Probe, you can just do it with impunity.

Ditto there's no rules stopping a telekenetic from strangling someone, or doing the Gil the Arm grabbing the heart trick. No save.

I'm not thrilled about having training be a feat. I do like the idea of Natural Psi. In addition to staving off aging penalties, perhaps it guarrantees the character a min. PSI strength of 7 or 8?

 

[Ran Malia]

I can understand people not wanting the feats, but in T20 feats are very important. I think the psi training is a great feat. It represents those who have taken the time to understand how psionics work and the way I have worked it out it gives a distinct advantage. Natural talent represents just that. I can be a natural pianist, but if I never take the time to learn the piano my options or rather my potential is severely limited, same thing for psi.

Another points, CT is the basis for this system, and I know this may be heretical, but improvement doesn't necessariy mean following the classic system. In CT the way that they limited you was that you had to have the money and you rolled after you mustered out. T20 is limiting psi through feats. When I am thinking about ways of changing it one my primary aims is to do it within the system. Personally I think that my way does that. I gave an examples of what I was thinking can you guys give example of wht you are thinking.

 

[Ran Malia]

Oh Yeah, from my understanding Psi Training allows you to roll for you psi without the age penalty, but it only gives you that if you take it as an initial feat, which is somewhat silly, because you could take a psi ability as your first level free feat and that would allow you to roll for your psi score and add skill. Just my thoughts.

 

[ljsteele]

I didn't think one could take any PSI feats (such as TK, T'port, T'path, etc.) except Natural Talent or Psi Training until one had gone through training and determined strength and affinities. Wouldn't make sense to do it the other way, else one would evade the whole random affinity mechanic.

Personally, I'd be willing to trade emulating CT for more workable mechanics but that doesn't seem to be one of the designers' goals. Thus, I'm looking for ways to honor the feel of CT within a d20 framework.

As written, the PSI Training feat (T20:108) offers zero advantages over paying for Psi Training in terms of skills or affinities. It does allow one to ignore the age penalties if taken at a specific time. I'm hard pressed to understand it's design purpose.

Natural Talent (T20:107) OTHO, gives the character the effect of Skill Focus (T20:109) in one affinity and allows them to know one of their potential affinities at start up and get at +2 to their eventual power. That is a much, much more useful feat that Psi Training. It appears that Natural Talent can be taken at any point in character creation, presumably until the character gets actually tested and trained.

 

[sea_tyger]

Has anyone stopped to wonder if psionics were too powerful in previous editions of Traveller? I can tell you for a fact that I felt they were. I'd rather have psionics be a minor part of the game (until the psion class [or whatever it will be called] is finally introduced), than have such unbalancing abilities as they were presented in previous Traveller editions.

Also, be aware that every class gets 10 bonus feats, in addition to starting feats (which, for psions, may include their choice of one psionic talent), so I think a dedicated psion class will be powerful enough. I don't think the system is broken, despite how unhappy you are with it as it stands.

 

[ljsteele]

No, never had any problem with psi in any game I was in. Psi was never that powerful because most characters had served enough terms in prior history that the aging cancelled out even a good roll and mostly gave folks flavor powers. A Psi based foe showed up maybe once per game year.

When you had a strong psi, it was rare, usually a one or two term character, and the psi made up for the fact that the character had crap for skills and usually bad stats (which is why they mustered out after 1-2 terms).

The current system I find unbalanced. It is overpowered in some areas like TK and T'port which are blatantly obvious and violate my suspension of disbelief far more than T'path, Clairvoy, and Awareness, which seem badly underpowered.

Looking for ideas....

One of the things I like about CT is that that psi is firmly an art, not a science. Once you get basic psi training, you learn the rest on the job, with rolls every month. I much prefer that feel to the idea of advanced training (at least outside th Zhondani).

Here's a possibility.

Natural Psi stays as is.
Training is required, there is no training feat. The training feat is eliminated.
There is one feat per sphere which cannot be gained before training.
Once one gains a sphere, one can start putting skill ranks into the associated skill. For all gradations within the sphere (what are now the subskills in Telepathy, or the mass distinctions in TK, FREX) one has to make a skill check to learn it. DC is equal to 15 + skill's "lvl" (comperable to a spellcraft roll to learn spells in D3e). Roll once per sphere/feat, no retry until you gain at least one rank in that skill (so effectively only once per level). Cannot "take 10" on this roll.) Psi skills are cross-class, hobby feat can apply.

The only question becomes how to set the skill lvls. I'd go with an odd numbered progression --

For telepathy

Shield (automatic)
Life Detection (lvl 1) (roll to learn 16-)
Telempathy (lvl 3) (1
Read Surface Thoughts (lvl 5) (20-)
Send Thoughts (lvl 7) (22-)
Probe (lvl 9 ) (24-)
Assault (lvl 11) (26-)

For TK
1 gram (lvl 1) (16-)
10 grams (lvl 3) (1
and so on.

The mathematics would mean that one would have to make a decent investment in skill ranks to have a 50/50 shot at most skills. Characters with multiple spheres can progress in them simultaneously, but at a large cost in skill points.

 

[Reginald]

Which book includes the original or classic Traveller psionic rules?

 

[ljsteele]

The CT rules are in one of the 3 basic black books. I think the book on worlds, but I don't have a set here.

Back to the PSI class....

Taking our examples from T20:180-185, a prestige class gets a feat or special ability per level.

Let's take George the Arm. He gets moderate strength and TK and T'port affinities. He needs 1 feat each to use them, then skill. By taking a level as a Psi Prestige class, all psi skills presumably become class skills for him (good-bye cross-class max. rank limit). We'll assume that Psi Prestige gets to pick one psi feat at each level. At level 1 he takes TK, at lvl 2, T'port. At this point, he's done. The other special feats are useless to him, the only other advantage is the lower cost for psi skills, but it likely isn't worth the benefits of another class.

Now let's take Gina the Mind. Gina has affinities for Telepathy and Clairvoyance. There are 7 separeate feats for Telepathy and 4 for Clairvoyance. The rank prerequisites will affect in what order she takes her feats, but she'll need 10 levels of Psi Prestige plus 1 of her normal 1 per 3 level feats to get all 11 abilities for her 2 affinities.

The imbalance of the feat structure within affinities is going to make creating a psionic prestige class hard.

 

[Jame]

Why not just use CT to tweak/replace the T20 PSI rules?

 

[Ran Malia]

Sea Tyger:

I also never had any problems with the psionics. Psionics have always been low key in all the Traveller systems that I have played, which I will admit isn’t all of them noticeably MegaTraveller. In my experience the problem comes from other players thinking that the psionicist has more abilities, which in the CT system he did have. T20 has attempted to change this by making it something that you acquire like any other skill or feat, thereby balancing it. The problem is that they didn’t put out a whole system and what they put out is unbalanced within the system presented. Psionics cost a lot in power points, which I believe is a valid weigh of keeping them low key, but then certain psionics give you a lot while other don’t. That is what the people on this discussion forum are debating

Lisa:

First thing is CT psionics is not an art it is a science. The politics of the Imperium in demonizing psionics may have made it more difficult to get institutionalized training, but as far as I know there is nothing that makes the claim that psionics as an art. The plain ability to make psionic-shielding come from the science of psionics.

Natural Psi should stay as it is or something close to what it is.

Psi Training: I think that this is a good feat, but it needs to have meaning in the game. Like I said, technically, all your character needs is to come up with the 100,000 Cr and they are trained and if there psi strength is greater than 12 they don’t even need the money, yet. Of course, as I stated before the importance of the Psi-Training feat is based on the system that you use for psionics in the game.

I am not completely adverse to skill/rank levels for the various sub skills, in that to attempt a skill you have to have a certain number of ranks, but I am against the skill roll to learn the ability. First, this puts in the imbalance and randomness back into the system. Second, and them stems from one’s viewpoint of psionics, if psionics is an art then it can be random like that, if it is a science then it isn’t. Third, it isn’t D&D and you already have a perception that psionics are just T20 magic. I think a better version would be:

Telepathy
Telepathy
Thought Detection (min skill rank 1)
Read Surface Thoughts (3)
Send Surface Thought (4)
Probe (9)
Assault (11)

Empathy
Sense Emotion
Send Mild emotion
Send radical emotion
Group emotion

Etc... You see what I am getting at. This way the skill system doesn’t change, by adding sub skills. The number of feats are evened out and you create more diverse psionicist. A character can be a telepath or empath. This would require a decent investment of skill, but actually give you some bang for your buck

As far as your example, if you look at the system I proposed a couple of posts back takes care of that problem and the alternative I just presented takes care of that problem.

 

[Ran Malia]

Jame different system and to be honest because it was the first doesn't mean that it was the best.

 

[ljsteele]

First thing is CT psionics is not an art it is a science. The politics of the Imperium in demonizing psionics may have made it more difficult to get institutionalized training, but as far as I know there is nothing that makes the claim that psionics as an art.

I was nigh positive that CT specifically said that that psi was an art, that's why the random roll to develop skills over time. My GM has the black book set. It'll take me a while to get it. Does anyone have it and can quote the text?

If I understand your proposal, it keeps the existing feat/skill structure, and adds more feats to the spheres that have less than 7. Or have I misunderstood.

I've been arguing strenuously against less feats and handling this via skill ranks only. I'm also not fond of a subskill idea. It feels more like GURPS than T20, which, like D20 and D3e has a pretty lean skill tree.

 

[Ran Malia]

I actually have the black books and I will look at it, but as I said in my post. I think that through the evolution of Traveller it is apparent that psionics is a result of scientific study and was something that everyone possessed, although at different degrees.

If I understand your proposal, it keeps the existing feat/skill structure, and adds more feats to the spheres that have less than 7. Or have I misunderstood.

As far as the skill feat structure I am keeping some of the basic elements but I am changing the structure. First, the spheres would stay the same, so you would still have the five spheres. Second, you would have disciplines or as you said sub-spheres, which would be feats, but that would be the end of the feats. As it is right now, if you have Telepathy, you have to go through seven feats and 10 (?) skill ranks to buy and use Assault. What I propose is that you use one feat and 10 skill ranks to get to Assault. What I am doing is decreasing the feats of some, increasing the feats of others and making psionics more balanced and diversified.

Back to our Telepathy discipline (subset) example, as it stands right now you have to have the prerequisite feats AND the skill ranks, I am getting rid of the feats. A telepath with the Telepathy discipline would need two feats to become a telepath (or at least an effective one)--Psionic Training and the Telepathy discipline, from there her skill ranks determine her abilities. Detect Thought (rank 2), Read Surface Thoughts (rank 4), Send Surface Thoughts (rank 5), Probe (rank 7), Assault (rank 9), all of which are based on the telepath’s skill level. As you may have noticed I took out Telempathy, because empathy would be it own discipline, which deals with feelings and emotion such as Detect Emotion (rank 2), Read Emotion (rank 4), Send Emotion (rank 5), Change Emotion (ranks 6), Mass Emotion (rank 7), Psychosomatic Assault (rank 10). These changes simplify and diversify telepathy. The only other feats would be psionic enhancement feats such as Rapport-a person with whom the psionicist has a natural link so that DC and Psi strength costs are greatly reduced.

This allows you to expand and contract the feat requirements. Telekinesis for example would be expanded into Telekinesis, Thermokinesis, and Kinetic Defense. It may not have as many disciplines as Telepathy has, but it isn’t as important anymore. It makes the pseudo-telepath actually effective although limited. For example, a 10th level marine could be an effective telepath. By 10th level a human marine would have 4 open feats that could be spent on Basic Training and Telepathy-Telepathy. Just by having those two feats the Marine would be able to spend 1 point per level and be able to use Assault. Furthermore if he wanted to spend the two other feats, he could use them on Mental Defense and Empathy. The limitation for him that is different from a psionic class or prestige class is that if he had access to other spheres he either would not be able to purchase them as feats or if he did he would pay cross class costs.

Another options would be advance disciplines, but that would be up to the GM or they could be higher-level abilities (ranks 11-20). For example, mental illusions could be a discipline consisting of; False Sound (rank 2), False Sight (rank 4), False Feeling (rank 6), etc... However for this discipline you would have to have telepathy at rank 7 first, because if you can’t send a thought how are you going to send an image or false sense?

I've been arguing strenuously against less feats and handling this via skill ranks only. I'm also not fond of a sub skill idea. It feels more like GURPS than T20, which, like D20 and D3e has a pretty lean skill tree.

As I said, I am doing a little of both, I am changing the structure of how feats work thereby decreasing some spheres while decreasing others. One thing that I am doing across the board is increasing what you can do with a psionic feat. On the skill side, the use of levels that I proposed is based off the idea that you gave. My initial proposal would be to handle this through DC, but they are both effective ways of demonstrating increasing ability. As far as it feeling more like GURPS, I think that the GURPS players out there would say that it is very different. Also, I am a firm believer, and this is not saying one system is better than the other, in you improve the game from whatever sources work. I may have pulled some GURPS ideas into this, but that in itself does not decrease the merits of the changes. This is a lean skill tree; in fact it only has three levels. Level 1-Psi Training, Level 2 Sphere Affinity, Level 3-Discipline.

Finally, (sorry for the long posts) what also makes this work is that there has been one thing that I have not touched from the old system and that is Psi Strength costs to use abilities. That is the limiting factor on using psionics. Assault against a person at medium range still cost 17 Psi strength points (I think). Most psionicist won’t be able to use this ability without the aid of drugs and even with this they will do it once. This forces the psionicist, game mechanics-wise to be subtle.

 

[clanmorrell]

Okay, I like the idea of Talents bought with Feats which provide you with a raw ability to use that talent. Then, buying Disciplines - being a subset of that Talent - which give you a group of abilities to use. I like that you can buy Telepathy and then buy the Telepathy discipline (and thus its abilities), as well as Empathy later on. I like that the abilities are based upon a Discipline DC check, the ability used having its own base DC target. This allows for a similar FEAT expenditure for a Psionicist, as per the standard T20 rules, but it is balanced and provides more ability sooner.

Another thought, and this is just my 2 cents worth, is to have the PSI cost connected to the DC target roll. Thus, whatever the skill is for that discipline 'Telepathy/Telepathy' should be the limit of points that the character can use for the ability. This means that more experienced characters can attempt the higher level abilities, just as it is in CT - in effect you PSI is limited by the current skill you have. Likewise, the current rule limits the 'skill' to the PSI score, so this works.

The other part of this idea, is that the cost to using the ability is the amount of effort the character puts into using the chosen ability. This is reflected by the bonus to the D20 roll, when trying to reach the DC. This normally would be the skill level, but in this situation the character has control over whether they use some or all of their skill level - and thus up to their skill level in PSI points.

This really limits the power of the Psionicist, and demands more skill from them and more PSI. So, even with a high PSI, and an easier path to gain the Assault ability - only a high level Psionicist can attempt it.

Another approach, is to still limit the cost by the current skill rank, but to have the given bonus to the D20 roll be the difference between the D20 result and the DC target. If this 'difference' is greater than the Psi's skill level, then they have failed, and have paid the cost in PSI equal to the skill level.

If, however, the 'difference' is lower than the skill level, then they Psionicist's PSI cost is lower, as less points are required.

Thus, the Psionicist's capacity to use their abilities is limited by their skill ranks, and by their available PSI points.

What do you think?

- Chris (clanmorrell)

 

[Ran Malia]

Then, buying Disciplines - being a subset of that Talent - which give you a group of abilities to use. I like that you can buy Telepathy and then buy the Telepathy discipline (and thus its abilities), as well as Empathy later on. I like that the abilities are based upon a Discipline DC check, the ability used having its own base DC target

Just for clarification you roll for sphere affinity as per standard D20 and then you buy the discipline. The real diversity is that if you wanted to be a Diana Troi type you could buy Empathy Discipline instead of Telepathy.

Another thought, and this is just my 2 cents worth, is to have the PSI cost connected to the DC target roll. Thus, whatever the skill is for that discipline 'Telepathy/Telepathy' should be the limit of points that the character can use for the ability. This means that more experienced characters can attempt the higher level abilities, just as it is in CT - in effect you PSI is limited by the current skill you have. Likewise, the current rule limits the 'skill' to the PSI score, so this works.

That is one way of doing it. In earlier discussions the idea was also presented that the DC checks just get higher so by default only a highly skilled psionicist could use Assault.

The other part of this idea, is that the cost to using the ability is the amount of effort the character puts into using the chosen ability. This is reflected by the bonus to the D20 roll, when trying to reach the DC. This normally would be the skill level, but in this situation the character has control over whether they use some or all of their skill level - and thus up to their skill level in PSI points.

I am not sure that I understand what you mean here. I think that skill and ability should remain seperate. One's skill is a result of training and practical experience while one's psi strength is an innate trait, just like strength or dexterity. I am not sure how that would help. If you could elaborate more on what you are proposing.

This really limits the power of the Psionicist, and demands more skill from them and more PSI. So, even with a high PSI, and an easier path to gain the Assault ability - only a high level Psionicist can attempt it.

This is a point that I don't understand, has anyone looked at the cost for using psionics? They are unbelievable. I didn't touch that in any direction, if anything it should be decreased. One of the reasons I think that the psi cost are so high is that if a psionicist used their power it was an automatic success. With the psionicist rolling I would suggest that if s/he fails it cost 1 psi point and if they succeed it cost the listed price. Like I said earlier, Assault from medium range cost 17 psi points you average psionicist (10) can't do it without psi drugs.

 

[CarlP]

I think that skill and ability should remain seperate. One's skill is a result of training and practical experience while one's psi strength is an innate trait, just like strength or dexterity.

Hmmm. I just had a thought while reading this over. If we are going to take psi down the road of giving it skill rolls, will we have modifiers based on psi strength? Suppose we had a PSI that wanted to use Telepathy. Her skill level is 4, her psi strength gives her a +2. Would she then get a +6 on her DC roll? My first inclination is yes. It keeps the mechanic the same as the rest of the T20 system. But then, I haven't had a chance to reflect upon this.

Oh, btw, one of these days, I'm thinking about putting a page with the psi rules we've been discussing on my website. I'm having a little trouble following all the suggestions each way. Maybe doing up the page, with the feats and skills and modifiers listed on it will make it easier for us to see what we're coming up with. Who knows, if we get a workable system hammered out, we might be famous!

Lastly, I was wanting to differentiate trained vs. untrained so that I could have a psi character that hadn't ever been to the Institute (and thus was completely below the radar), who was teaching herself how to use her powers. But Lisa, I'd forgotten about the "Hobby" rule. I think that selecting psi as a hobby would have the same effect that I was after. Thanks!